Green Day. Ever since they made themselves visible, back in ninety-whatever, with a bunch of catchy power-pop-punk singles - including one about jerking off - I've avoided them for being too obvious and too shallow - Punk Rock For Dummies - because. back when Green Day first appeared, I was playing in various bands of my own, and wouldn't tolerate other bands who took cheap shortcuts to songwriting. Unless they were being ironic, of course. Which Green Day wasn't. Oh, and maybe there was a bit of jealousy there, too: we all knew we could write songs like that, we just chose not to! (yeah, right) But, that was 15 years ago. Fast forward to modern times... a few weeks ago, the fantastic Mrs. Cleek and I were flipping through our 300 channels and landed on a Green Day concert on "Fuse" (which is like MTV for jumpy teenage skater boys - with eXtra eXtreme atty-tood, bitch!). They were surprisingly good - crazy catchy and authentically rocking. I knew half the songs already from simple osmosis over the years, I guess. I was impressed. So, I tossed-aside my rock-snobbery and bought "American Idiot". And then the next week I bought "Dookie". And I'm restraining myself from buying whatever else they've put out. Mrs Cleek loves here some "American Idiot". I think I like "Dookie" better - and that song about jerking off is awesome.

Bright Eyes. I'd read a bunch of reviews of him (Conor Oberst) here and there, many gushing with praise, but more than a couple putting him down for being some kind of punk-ass third-rate Dylan wanna-be for teenage girls. And I listened to a few previews on iTunes but didn't find anything that interested me, so I put Bright Eyes out of mind... until I discovered that he'd done a little EP with Brit Daniels from Spoon (a band I adore). So I bought that, and I love it. The two of them sound good together. Then a couple of weeks ago, the mighty Mrs Cleek and I saw Bright Eyes on Austin City Limits and I was impressed - not sure about Mrs C.. So, I went back to iTunes, did some more previews and picked up "I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning". I like it. It's just simple folky songs sung by a guy with a high, wiggly voice, a bit like Gordon Gano from the Violent Femmes. Sure, the Dylan comparison is an easy one to make because Oberst is singing wordy folk songs and playing acoustic guitar (and we all know Dylan was the only person to ever do that!). But unlike the hilariously bitter reviewer at allMusic.com, I don't fault Mr. Oberst for being 24 years old and not being the equal to Dylan, or McCartney, or Cobain. He does his thing and that's good enough for me.